Lisa Jervis' Cook Food Reading & Cooking Demo on Aug. 12 at Modern Times

[Guest guest]

Event: Bookreading & Cooking Demo by LISA JERVIS, author of COOK FOOD: A

MANUALFESTO FOR EASY, HEALTHY, LOCAL EATING

Wednesday, August 12

Time: 7 – 8:30 pm

Place: Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia St./20th St., San Francisco.

415-282-9246.

Lisa Jervis has created more than just a rousing food manifesto and a nifty set

of tools—Cook Food makes preparing tasty, wholesome meals simple and accessible

for those hungry for both change and scrumptious fare. If you want to eat

healthier but aren't sure where to start, or if you've been reading about food

politics but don't know how to bring sustainable eating practices into your

everyday life, Cook Food will give you the scoop, while keeping your taste buds

satisfied. With a conversational, DIY vibe, a practical approach to everyday

cooking on a budget, and a whole bunch of animal-free recipes, Cook Food will

have you cooking up a storm, tasting the difference, thinking globally and

eating locally. (PM Press) http://www.mtbs.com/events.html

http://cook-food.org/2009/07/modern-times-888-valencia-san-francisco/

[Guest guest]

During her reading at Modern Times, Cook Food author Lisa Jervis prepared Corn &

Tomato Salad using just 6 ingredients (corn, tomato, basil, lemon, olive oil &

kosher salt) from scratch within 15 minutes!

Excerpts from East Bay Express review of Lisa Jervis' Cook Food at

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/artsculture/back_to_the_kitchen/Content?oid=117273\

9

Back to the Kitchen

The founder of Bitch magazine brings her feminist sensibility to a new cookbook.

By Rachel Swan

August 12, 2009

In 1996 Lisa Jervis became an It Girl in the publishing world, after she and

Andi Zeisler co-founded the hip quarterly magazine Bitch: A Feminist Response to

Pop Culture. Jervis, who graduated from Oberlin College in 1994 with degrees in

English and creative writing, had a fresh, imaginative style that outstripped

her more doctrinaire peers. She and Zeisler were omnivorous consumers of media:

They could provide knowledgeable critiques of reality TV, pop music, and fashion

trends because they loved most of the stuff they talked about. Moreover, they

were feminine feminists who liked to knit, bake, and read Jane Austen novels in

their spare time. . .

Her new book, Cook Food: A Manualfesto for Easy, Healthy, Local Eating, helps

direct the journeyman cook toward what she calls " light footprint eating " (i.e.,

food that wastes as few resources as possible). Inspired, in part, by

journalists of the Michael Pollan and Raj Patel strain, Jervis opens with a

chatty essay about the industrialized food system and what it means to eat

" healthy " (in a nutshell: eliminate processed food from your grocery list). All

of her recipes are vegan (but for a couple of cheese suggestions). Jervis

includes two meticulous chapters on proper kitchen assembly, with lists of

appliances to purchase and spices to stock. A self-confessed kitchenware

fetishist, she divides her equipment up by importance: Knives are worth making

the trip to a specialty store, she says; a rice cooker is expensive " but

seriously worth it " ; microwave ovens are cumbersome and ultimately pretty

useless. . .

Definitely a foodie, if not a chef de haute cuisine, Jervis represents the next

wave of self-made chef personalities. . . Finally — especially in the Bay Area

— there's a whole movement to politicize cooking, either by de-industrializing

the ingredients or by turning it into a form of identity politics. Slow-food

cookbooks, raw-food cookbooks, and vegan cookbooks are all the rage. Bryant

Terry's Vegan Soul Kitchen — which reimagines African-American cuisine using all

vegan ingredients — was an extremely well-timed success. Into this realm steps

Jervis, whose book is both a feminist tract and a return to femininity in the

kitchen — that old-school image of the commanding nurturer who knew how to

combine flavors but could also tell you how to organize things. The

" manualfesto " subtitle seems apropos.

Jervis grew up in New York City with a mother who cooked and a father who

cleaned the kitchen. She started cooking by her mother's side and kept it up as

a hobby for 25 years, she says, despite having a high-pressure job in the

magazine business. Jervis got on the health-food kick after meeting Debbie

Rasmussen, who succeeded her as publisher of Bitch. Rasmussen is a strict vegan

who preaches about the importance of whole foods. " I never really thought that

much about how much my food was processed, " said Jervis. " I mean, I'd already

started to cut out hydrogenated oils — that was obviously really artificial and

bad. But I had never really thought about white flour being less nutritionally

robust than wheat flour. " Jervis latched onto the idea of sourcing animal

products and avoiding packaged foods. She now buys most raw ingredients at

farmers' markets or Berkeley Bowl. She's a self-professed food-science geek.

Like many of her mainstream counterparts, Jervis is a cook for the high-powered

working adult with a tight budget and short time window. " I don't want to spend

all day in the kitchen very often, " said the author, explaining why she

purposely avoided dumplings, empanadas, and other rococo dishes that take more

than 45 minutes to prepare (in Cook Food she sticks to salads, sauces, tofu

dishes, a few baked goods, and recipes with beans). In some ways, she's not

actually that far from the Rachel Ray type — someone who favors pragmatism over

a refined palate. What distinguishes Jervis from the pack is the

female-empowerment slant to her book, if you define " empowerment " as taking

charge of your food choices and thinking about " how your body functions, rather

than how it looks. "

She said that one interviewer asked how she could reconcile being a feminist and

having a book that encourages women to get back in the kitchen. To Jervis, the

question seemed facile. " I think that gender role has been pretty roundly

destroyed, thank God, " she said. Not to mention that if some guy picked up her

book and tried out the recipes, " that's a totally feminist thing. "

 

, " carmen_cebs " <carmen_cebs wrote:

>

> Event: Bookreading & Cooking Demo by LISA JERVIS, author of COOK FOOD: A

MANUALFESTO FOR EASY, HEALTHY, LOCAL EATING

> Wednesday, August 12

> Time: 7 – 8:30 pm

> Place: Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia St./20th St., San Francisco.

415-282-9246.

> Lisa Jervis has created more than just a rousing food manifesto and a nifty

set of tools—Cook Food makes preparing tasty, wholesome meals simple and

accessible for those hungry for both change and scrumptious fare. If you want to

eat healthier but aren't sure where to start, or if you've been reading about

food politics but don't know how to bring sustainable eating practices into your

everyday life, Cook Food will give you the scoop, while keeping your taste buds

satisfied. With a conversational, DIY vibe, a practical approach to everyday

cooking on a budget, and a whole bunch of animal-free recipes, Cook Food will

have you cooking up a storm, tasting the difference, thinking globally and

eating locally. (PM Press) http://www.mtbs.com/events.html

> http://cook-food.org/2009/07/modern-times-888-valencia-san-francisco/

>